persistently displayed. St. Evrémond finds juster cause for his bored
state of mind in the triviality of the subject-matter of operas, and
his words are worth quoting at some length: 'La langueur ordinaire où
je tombe aux opéras, vient de ce que je n'en ai jamais vu qui ne m'ait
paru méprisable dans la disposition du sujet, et dans les vers. Or,
c'est vainement que l'oreille est flattée, et que les yeux sont
charmés, si l'esprit ne se trouve pas satisfait; mon âme
d'intelligence avec mon esprit plus qu'avec mes sens, forme une
résistance aux impressions qu'elle peut recevoir, ou pour le moins
elle manque d'y prêter un consentement agréable, sans lequel les
objets les plus voluptueux même ne sauraient me donner un grand
plaisir. Une sottise chargée de musique, de danses, de machines, de
décorations, est une sottise magnifique; c'est un vilain fonds sous de
beaux dehors, où je pénètre avec beaucoup de désagrément.'

The cant phrase in use in FitzGerald's days, 'the lyric stage', might
have conveyed a hint of the truth to a man who cared for the forms of
literature as well as its essence. For, in its highest development,
opera is most nearly akin to lyrical utterances in poetry, and the most
important musical revolution of the present century has been in the
direction of increasing, not diminishing, the lyrical quality of
operatic work. The Elizabethan writers--not only the dramatists, but the
authors of romances--interspersed their blank verse or their prose
narration with short lyrical poems, just as in the days of Mozart the
airs and concerted pieces in an opera were connected by wastes of
recitative that were most aptly called 'dry'; and as it was left to a
modern poet to tell, in a series of lyrics succeeding one another
without interval, a dramatic story such as that of _Maud_, so was it a
modern composer who carried to completion, in 'Tristan und Isolde', the
dramatic expression of passion at the highest point of lyrical